A student describes a lifelong pattern of swinging between extremes of activity and collapse, and questions whether spiritual seeking itself is just another form of that same ping-ponging.
A student describes a lifelong pattern of swinging between extremes of activity and collapse, and questions whether spiritual seeking itself is just another form of that same ping-ponging.
I don't have a question exactly, but a lot is bubbling up, especially around this topic of the middle way. I notice that so much of my life, pretty much all of it, has been about loving extremes and ping-ponging between them. Either I'm fully alive and fully in everything, having the best time, or I'm exhausted and completely checked out, isolating. You could even call it a manic-depressive kind of pattern. I don't think that's the case with me, but I notice the extremes, and how uncomfortable it is to be in the middle, for multiple reasons.
There's some belief that the middle is boring, and a fear that boring is equated with a kind of death, like there's just nothing there. The attachment to the drama feels way more alive: "I'm exhausted," "I'm active," back and forth. And then I see how much my illness supports that pattern. My body just breaks down when it's tired, and then I don't have a choice to go be active anymore. It's almost helpful; my body enforces it. And then when I get sick of being a broken body in isolation, I will myself into a healthy body that can go be active again. It's this constant back and forth.
I was also listening to a video of a woman who had been teaching non-duality for a long time and then stopped, because her realization deepened to where she saw that even non-duality was a landing, and teaching it was pointless. She showed this cute little comic where the right hemisphere of the brain is dressed up in spiritual garb saying, "Everything is one, there is no self, there is nothing to do," and the left brain is saying, "No, there is something to do, there is a person here, what are you talking about?" She said spiritual seeking is basically a brain lobotomy: someone trying to live in only one hemisphere. The truth is that both are equally valid, both are part of this reality. Non-duality becomes another duality.
It just feels like another game. Yes, there are people who seem to have achieved some kind of right-hemisphere, no-self way of living, but is that really just another goal, another prize for the ego, the belief that something around the corner is better? That's not a new realization for me. I know that, I've seen that. Obviously, right here is where everything is. And yet we come to these gatherings because we want something different, we want whatever full liberation is promising. So it's like something is missing, and yet nothing is missing. It feels again like that extreme duality of jumping from side to side, still missing the simplicity of this middle where everything is included. And everything I'm saying is the teaching; nothing I'm saying is not the teaching. But it just lands in a different place for me.
The extremes are sustained by belief
All of this is very valid. The main thing to see is this: the ping-ponging you're describing, the swinging between extremes, is only possible as a consequence of believing your thoughts. Going to the extremes only happens when we believe in those extremes. I relate to this; it's naturally my personality as well, to be extreme.
Everything else around the teachings is very difficult to clarify in words. It can only be clarified through deeper realization. And these are more words for more teachings, but one way it can be said is: the only thing that is missing is the absolute, total realization that there's nothing missing.
Radical non-duality and its limits
There are teachers who have a style and a love and a preference for teaching more radical non-duality, and I think that's a very beautiful and valid thing. Even so, it only applies to certain people, or it's only valuable to certain people. For others, it may be less so.
The teaching of no-self (let's call it that, or non-duality) is also found in Buddhism. In fact, non-duality does not teach that there is no self. Buddhism does. And that's where these traditions have disagreed for thousands of years. Buddhism says there is no self. Vedanta says there is a self; it's just not what you think it is. To me, it's quite beautiful that in the East there are two profoundly deep spiritual traditions that fundamentally disagree at the most fundamental level, because it highlights that you can't define anything one way or another.
Teachings as antidotes to belief
The teaching that there is no self is only useful and valuable for those who hold a very strong conviction that there is a self, which is society in general today. But if we were in a society where ninety-eight percent of people believed there is no self, the spiritual teaching would be: there is a self. Because the point is about undoing, about uprooting belief systems.
If the belief in a self isn't there but one walks around believing "there is no self," that too is a belief system. There's just the replacement of one belief with another, and that is not true realization, not true non-duality. Still, one might have the preference to teach no-self in a society that is mostly convinced there is a self. And I think that's a very beautiful thing.